Inner Turmoil
by goldnote
Summary: Drakken's plans fail... again. But, will he find out what he really wants after finding secrets about Shego? What choices will lie ahead of them both? Rated T... DrakkenShego FINISHED!
1. You Forgot About Me

_Hello! This is my first Kim Possible fic! I originally write fics about "House M.D." and about marching band, with a few odd and end stories thrown in, and this is one of my odd and end stories! I've wanted to write a Kim Possible fic for ages about Drakken and Shego, but I've always put my plot bunnies to work on other things. Normally, I don't watch cartoons, but I thought Kim Possible was interesting enough... So, this was written for a Live Journal community called Fiction Press, run by a friend of mine called Pyraterose (she is the author of Pirates In The Pantry, which is a companion to Elves In The Shower and Kender In The Closet, in case you wanted to know!). I wrote this story for the challenge on the community and I figured I might as well post it here to see what people think! This is a leap out of my world, though, and I have to warn the reader right now that I know very little about the world of Kim Possible; I just wanted to write a story about Drakken and Shego. So, this will have more than one chapter, but I don't know how long it's going to be. Please tell me what you think, though, so I can figure out what to work on for the next chapter! Thank you!_

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**Inner Turmoil**

Chapter One: You Forgot About Me

He was back to square one, like usual. His lair was an absolute mess, rock and various bits of scrap metal strewn from wall to wall from where the laser had missed it's mark and blasted into ceiling. He was lucky the entire lair hadn't collapsed. He didn't know where Shego was, or where any of his henchmen had went. All he knew was that the device had been destroyed and Kim Possible had escaped once again. Drakken sighed and muttered to himself, dropping his head into his gloved hands.

"Why is it that, every time I have a good idea, that teenage brat comes along and ruins everything? If I could only succeed one time, just one time, I would- Why, I would-"

"I was looking for you, too," said a sarcastic voice behind him. Looking up, Drakken saw Shego staring at him, hands on hips, eyes flashing. Drakken rolled his eyes.

"Oh, it's only you," he said, nearly sighing in relief, turning away from her to survey the damage one last time before he had to think of a plan to clean up.

"Only me? Only me!"

Shego's hands clenched into fists and started to glow their usual green in her fury. Drakken didn't notice her until she stomped up to him and kicked him full in the ribs. Drakken collapsed against a particularly large piece of scrap metal, sprawled across it, hardly knowing how he got there. There was a sharp throbbing where his assistant had kicked him and he winced at the pain.

"Shego, what has gotten into you?" Drakken asked, growing angry, trying to pick himself up and failing miserably at the task. He looked closely at the young woman and then realized what was different.

There was blood on her green and black outfit.

The thing that shocked him, though, were tears in her eyes.

"Shego?" he asked softly, "Shego?"

"You didn't come and find me," she hissed, fury mingling with fear. "You didn't come find me. You went to check on your precious control room, on your equipment. You didn't come find me."

"But, Shego, you-"

Drakken stopped talking after Shego's eyes rolled and fluttered shut, her lithe body falling to the floor, the green light around her hands extinguished. Panic filled his heart as he managed to pull himself up and run to where Shego lay on the cold stone. This was the first time she had done something like this, to faint, to collapse right in front of him.

"Shego!" he called out, biting his lip, taking her pulse. As he bent over her, Dr. Drakken realized that the blood on her outfit was her own.

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She lay on her own bed, Dr. Drakken sitting nervously in a chair at her side. Shego had been unconscious for quite awhile, worrying Drakken as much as it relieved him. It worried him because he had never seen Shego this weak, but relieved him because she would never know he had dressed her wounds himself if he never told her.

He had never been in Shego's room before, come to think of it. Drakken looked around, curious. The room was circular, the rock walls covered in plain, green drapes where the cold seeped through the walls the most. At the far end of the room was her dresser, full of her clothes. He had never seen Shego wear anything but her usual green and black jumpsuit and, tiptoeing across the room, Drakken opened a drawer. He found it full of green tanks and black pants, black shirts and green belts. There was nothing of any other color. Just green and black.

Walking over to her vanity, Drakken picked up the comb that brushed the long dark hair he had taken for granted. Looking at her reflection in the mirror in front of him, laying in the bed so pitifully weak, Drakken realized how beautiful her hair was. He wished he could touch it, to wrap it around his fingers, but he just put the brush down and scanned over the rest of the things laying on the vanity. He saw no jewelry. Come to think of it, he had never seen her wear any jewelry, either.

Or maybe he had never noticed.

"Do you mind?"

A weak voice tried to yell at him from across the room and Drakken whipped around, startled. He saw Shego looking at him with a snarl on her face, her pale skin ghostly white in the faint light coming from the lamp on her bedside table. Dr. Drakken hurried to her side and sat down in his chair, grabbing one of her hands.

"How are you feeling, Shego?" he asked, hoping she wouldn't snap at him.

"Awful," she answered, closing her eyes and sighing. She made to touch her head, but realized he had her hand and he wasn't letting go. He had never done that before, never in all her history of being his assistant.

"You're pretty worried, huh, Dr. D?" she asked softly, trying to make out his face. Shego made to sit up, but he pushed her back down gently.

"Yeah, I was," he answered just as softly, never making eye contact with her. "This was the first time you've collapsed."

"No, not the first time," Shego said carefully, "There have been other times. I've just never told you."

"But, you always helped me pick up after the mess Kim Possible always made. You never looked-"

"You've never been here before, in my room," she interrupted. "I can tell you how many times I've come back here and collapsed. I've always taken care of myself; you don't need to do anything for me."

"No, you're wrong," Drakken said, flinching at her sharp tone she had taken with him. "You need me to help you. You need me to tell you-"

"What?" snapped Shego, trying to sit up again, yanking her hand from his scornfully. "I need you to tell me what to do, where to go? What I should say? I don't need you to tell me anything!"

"Yes, you do," Drakken said softly as he got up and walked toward the door, not wanting Shego to hurt herself anymore at his expense.

"I need you to tell me what?"

"That I'm sorry I didn't think of you first after the lab was destroyed."

Shego softened and leaned back against her headboard, looking at the green covers on her bed and wrapping her fingers around the fabric.

"Oh, I guess... I- Apology accepted."

Drakken walked out of the room, closing the door behind him softly, the three words he wanted to say to her getting stuck in his throat, his own inner turmoil pulling them back. Drakken had a lot of work ahead of him.

And a lot of choices to make.

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_Thank you so much for putting up with the randomness of this chapter! I wasn't even sure I was going to write another chapter or leave it as a one shot, but another chapter should be coming up in about a week or two, okay? Thanks so much for reading and please leave me some helpful critique, if possible! Thanks again!_


	2. Silence

_Hello! I update this story every week to two weeks... Sorry about the delay if you actually read it. Hehe. I don't have too many reviews, and I would really like to hear some feedback on this story. Even if you hate it, tell me about it so I can make it better. I write this story for a challenge on LJ, so just tell me what you think so I can work on some parts of it. Thanks! Enjoy! (Thanks to everyone who has reviewed already...)_

Silence

Shego managed to slide out of bed after Drakken had left, knees wobbly as she made her way to her dresser for her hairbrush. She wanted to ask him for it before he had left, but didn't need any favors, too stubborn to just sit in bed and do nothing. Looking at herself in the mirror, Shego sighed, pulling at her pale skin with her fingers. She looked awful and wondered if Drakken had been so nervous because of it; Shego had never looked this sickly in her entire life. Her head was pounding like a bass drum in a marching band and Shego resisted the temptation to dig in her dresser drawers for a bottle of painkiller. She couldn't even remember if it was in a dresser drawer and wasn't going to go on a hunt for it. Shego rarely took painkillers. She felt she didn't need them, that the pain was temporary and if she couldn't wait it out, she was weak. After several seconds of battle with the urge to find the medicine or go back to bed and sleep it off, Shego decided to throw out the two fighting options and just brush her hair, like she had initially gotten up to do.

Shego took the black hairbrush from the dresser and started to pull the tangles out of her long black hair, wincing slightly when the brush tines hit a particularly tight knot and pulled. Her skin was sensitive and Shego felt the chills coming on, just wanting to go back to bed. She considered it, but kept brushing, refusing to give into her body's demands of rest. Just a little longer on her feet and then she would go back to bed. Just a little longer...

Crashing noises came to Shego's ears, all the way across the lair, and she could hear swearing. Swearing under her breath herself, Shego supposed Drakken was trying to salvage some of his ruined weapons and the process was not going very well. Almost serves him right, she thought, grinning slightly at the vision she had painted in her head of Drakken, kicking the damaged machines in fury, stomping around, ranting. She was the only one who sat with him when he was ranting. Usually, she pretended to ignore him or busy herself with some other task just to annoy him, but now he was alone, probably stomping around the entire lair just to blow off steam.

Putting the brush down, her hair brushed enough so it wouldn't drive her insane while in bed, Shego stumbled to the dresser and half heartedly searched for the bottle of medication while she found a pair of clean pajamas. A bit of blood had soaked through the bandages and- Wait. Bandages? She hadn't fixed herself up; all she remembered was Drakken's lair and then waking up with him sitting by the bed, like a lost, blue pet. With growing fury, Shego unbuttoned part of her pajama shirt, finding bandages wrapped around her ribs where she had been wounded. How had she gotten this wound to begin with?

Shego thought hard and remembered a purple ray coming at her as Kim knocked her down. She had pushed Kim away and rolled over on her back, watching Kim grab her partner's hand and run out of the lair as the purple ray continued to go berserk.

_Walls crumbled, the screech of falling metal filling her ears, the pounding vibrations on the floor shaking her as rock fell inches from where she lay. A large beam fell across her chest and her vision was clouded by dust, great clouds of dust that chocked her. Drakken was yelling and she could see faint silhouettes of henchmen running away through the dust before it grew so thick that she had to shut her eyes. The crushing pain was shooting through her and everything went black._

_When she had come to, she had used her superhuman strength to push the beam off of her, ignoring the details as she tried to keep herself from being crushed any further. She stumbled away from the wreckage, tripping over her own feet, finding new strength in fury as her only thought was to find Drakken, since he had not come to find her._

Shego was startled to find her eyes watering and blamed it on the pain, digging with renewed determination to find that pill bottle. If she didn't need it for pain, she could at least take a few anyway. Through her rummaging, Shego heard something crash and jumped at how loud it had been, glaring at the door. Only, this time, Drakken's voice was not adding to the noise.

It was silent.

Biting her lip, Shego grabbed a jumpsuit from the dresser, throwing it on her bed as she undressed and tried to tighten her bandages. Drakken had not done a very good job; usually, she had helped the henchmen bandage_ him_ up. Ignoring the pain in her head and resolving to ignore her wounds, Shego tossed the pajamas away and dressed in her usual outfit.

Even if he had not rescued her, she wasn't going to let herself do the same to him.

It was just too much to ignore the silence and continue with her own moping if he might be hurt.


	3. It Matters After All

_Hello, all! This was another chapter I posted for Pyrate Rose's LJ Challenge under Misc. Fiction Challenge and thought I would update! Hehe... This is just a story I do for writing exercise, so I don't care if it's awful or not, I just like to write it. Thanks so much for reading and please tell me what you think! _

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** It Matters After All**

"Drakken?" Shego called as she approached the lab, her footsteps hardly echoing off the rock walls. "Where are you? Drakken?"

No answer. There was no answer no matter how many times she called out to him and Shego was started to get angry. How dare he? She was calling for him, asking him to respond to her, expecting him to answer back but never getting one to calm her nerves. What is he was hurt? She wasn't strong enough to carry him, not when she was injured. Under any other circumstances, she could save him and any of his henchmen from any predicament they found themselves in, but she wasn't going to kill herself at the moment trying to lift him. Or lift something off him, like he hadn't done for her.

"Drakken, answer me right now!"

Her nerves were on fire, her thoughts doing a whirlwind tango in her mind. Her head still throbbed and, with every step she took, she felt lightheaded. Shego kept walking, however, her natural stealth keeping her from being heard by anything or anyone. Maybe that's why Drakken never noticed when Shego walked into the lab.

He was sitting on one of the boulders that had fallen from the ceiling, the gap the rock left letting moonlight into the room. It was the only light to see by, all the lamps destroyed in the chaos wreaked by the lasers, and the moonlight was so bright that everything was either illuminated to the point of pure white or cast into inpenetrable shadow. Without any reason, Drakken kicked at a stone in front of him, sending it dancing across the floor to knock against Shego's foot. The sudden halt to the stone's clatter made Drakken look up and see the green and black figure standing in the doorway, hands on hips, hair falling down her back in a waterfall of raven wings, every wave and dip enhanced. Drakken didn't remember seeing her this beautiful, or this angry, in a very long time. Even the argument they had had hardly a half an hour ago was nothing compared to the fury on Shego's face now.

Shego could have screamed at him or used her remaining strength to beat him up, like she had done so many times before, but she stood there, staring at Drakken. She expected him to use big words to impress her, or put up a defense against her attacks, or even get up and walk away.

She never expected him to burst into tears.

"Drakken, what's wrong?" she asked sarcastically, sashaying over to where he sat, crossing her arms. "You have the perfect lab, the perfect weapons, and the perfect henchmen. What more could you want? A perfect sidekick?"

There was silence broken only by Drakken's occassional hiccup. He was trying to keep the sobs back, but the tears kept flowing. He wiped them away and sniffled, getting up and turning away from Shego, who snarled.

"If you wanted the perfect sidekick, you should have taken better care of me. Drakken, aren't you going to answer me? Drakken?"

"I have nothing, Shego. Nothing is left. The entire lab is destroyed. We're lucky the building didn't collapse on us. We're lucky the police aren't here right now. It's because of Kim Possible's 'mercy' that we aren't trying to bust out of prision right now. Or a hospital, where you should be."

"A hospital?" Shego asked, shuddering. "Why a hospital? I'm fine."

"No, you're not. You're shaking."

"No, I'm not."

"Fine, you're not shaking. But I still see it, no matter what you say."

Shego stood still for several moments, hardly knowing what to say next. She expected the usual: fight, plan, fight some more, then go to sleep. She didn't expect to see Drakken crying or treating her any different than usual.

"What's going on? You were treating me different in my room, now you're treating me differently here. Where is that Drakken that always had another plan, no matter how many other plans Kim Possible destroyed? Where is the guy I fight with every ten minutes? He's not here, crying, is he?"

"I don't know, Shego. I don't-"

"I don't think you don't know. I think you know, but you're not going to tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What's bothering you!"

Shego slumped down on the rock Drakken had previously been sitting on, trying to ignore the stitch in her side. She could feel the bandages clump up under her jumpsuit and knew that, if she caused herself to pull the wounds apart again, she wouldn't be able to hide the bloodstains from Drakken. The scientist pulled his shoulders up and straightened his back, never looking at Shego.

"I can't tell you, not yet."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because you're not ready. I'm not ready. It'll destroy everything."

"Yeah, because everything isn't destroyed already," Shego remarked, waving her hand across her face. "If you don't tell me, I'll force it out of you."

"Shego, it's not going to work like that this time. I didn't even know about the things that I know about now until everything else was ruined. It took that much to show me what I really-"

"Did you find a secret weapon? A master plan? Tell me so I can steal it for you!"

"You've already stolen something from me."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Drakken, if this is poetic nonesense, I had no point in getting out of bed."

"I was going to ask you why you were out of bed to begin with."

Shego stood and crossed the room. Both Drakken and his sidekick sighed at the same time before Drakken spoke.

"You know, there isn't a single photograph of us together?"

"Why does that matter?"

"It doesn't, at least to you, Shego. Go back to bed."

"Happy to comply. You're not making sense, anyway."

"Then why did you come here in the first place?"

Drakken's voice was calm and soft. He wasn't trying to pick a fight or aggrivate Shego. He wasn't even trying to convince her to do something for him. He was simply stateing. And that was what made Shego answer, because she had never heard him like this before.

"I came here because I thought you were hurt. Like the fool I was, I wanted to come save you. Goodnight, Drakken."

As Shego left the room, Drakken walked to the ruined counsole against the broken screen, running a gloved hand over the sharp edges, letting the metal dig into the leather gloves but never pressing hard enough to cut the skin.

"Then it matters after all, Shego, and you just don't see it yet."


	4. The Three Words

_Hello! Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed this little project of mine. I felt bad for ignoring it for so long so, when locked in by a blizzard, I decided I was going to finish it off. Short, sweet, and to the point! Thank you all, once again!_

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The Three Words

Drakken tapped on Shego's door tentatively. He wasn't even sure why he was there and was rather sick of the drama this was all causing, but Drakken needed to talk with Shego without having her run away from him. As he stood in front of the door, he wondered why this was so important. Why was it so important she knew how he felt? Drakken knew Shego was clever, clever enough to know there was something more between them than entrepreneurship. Hadn't Drakken always felt something for her and hadn't she always known all along?

"Come in," came Shego's voice and, as Drakken put his hand on the door handle, he gulped as she added, "unless you're the mad scientist who doesn't understand I'm going to kill him the moment he walks into this room."

Opening the door carefully, Drakken made sure not to step foot inside her room as he watched her. Shego must have gotten blood on the last change of clothing because she had gotten dressed, yet again. A green tank and black flannel pants were much more comfortable than her jumpsuit, Drakken supposed, but it didn't do anything to help him stop stammering. In fact, it only made the problem worse because she looked even prettier than usual. He could see the bandages poke out in the fabric and wind their way past the hem of the top and Shego, sensing he was looking with concern at her bandages, crossed her arms.

"I'm giving you ten seconds to say what you need to say. I'm tired of this nonsense, going back and forth. If we're going to be adults, we need to be adults and stop talking like kids," Shego snapped, turning away from Drakken and going back to her dresser, where she slammed a drawer shut after opening it for no reason.

One, two, three...

Drakken swallowed and tried to form words, but just couldn't.

Four, five, six...

Shego turned around and balled her hands into fists, the green plasma whirling around them and growing brighter and brighter as she became more and more angry.

Seven, eight, nine...

"I love you, Shego!"

Ten.

Putting her hands down from where she had raised them to blow Dr. Drakken off the face of the earth, Shego blinked, unclenching her hands. Drakken, suddenly very relieved, rested a hand against the doorjam, sighing in satisfaction. Maybe he wasn't satisfied with the way his declaration of affection had been forced out of him, but it was at least out there, his feelings confirmed with his own words. He looked directly at Shego, who now looked as lost as Drakken had felt just a few minutes before. His sidekick wandered over to the bed, where she sat with her back to him, feet dangling over the edge. He wanted to go to her, to say something, but wasn't sure of what to do.

"Um, if I come in, are you still going to kill me?" he asked nervously and, after getting no response, Drakken backed away. He could still feel a heat radiating from her, a power that only came when she was so upset she was about to destroy the entire lair.

"No, I'm not going to kill you."

"What are you going to do?"

"Tell you I love you back."

Drakken stepped inside the room, a smile on his face, his arms open. It was better than the feeling when he almost stopped Kim Possible as Shego accepted his embrace and shut her eyes as she smiled along with him.

After so much time, the inner turmoil was gone. Now it was only them.


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